H.R. 3590 – Senate Vote to Cloture in the Wee Hours.

On December 21 at 1:08 AM EST, the Senate voted to invoke cloture on H.R. 3590. This means they have decided to cut off further debate and vote on whether to pass the health reform bill, still known under it’s original title as the “Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009”, but amended to read: “ Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”.

This means the fifteen amendments and the agreed to tabling motions will stand. The remaining 459 amendments that were submitted will not be debated. There are, however, two additional new amendments that were submitted and agreed to as part of the motion to invoke cloture. They are: S.AMDT.3276, the so called “Manager’s Amendment”, introduced by Harry Reid, and S.AMDT.3277, an amendment as seen below, that directs the bill start date to be five days after it becomes an act by presidential signature.

S.AMDT.3276 contains the language directing the “compromise” on women’s rights over their bodies regarding abortion. It also contains the language on Medicaid disbursement by the Federal Government for new Medicaid patients. There is an intriguing reference to ARRA on page 13500, which might mean something if they decide to extend it.

S.AMDT.3276 was only available on the Congressional Record pages, so I have cut, pasted and printed the pages to .pdf to produce the document S.AMDT.3276. As with any pdf document it is keyword searchable. For your info, in the Record, 39 pages were used, however, when I printed it to .pdf, it took 178 pages.

The final vote, possibly turning this thing into an act, may come today.

SA 3277. Mr. REID proposed an amendment to amendment SA 3276 proposed by Mr. Reid (for himself, Mr. Baucus, Mr. Dodd, and Mr. Harkin) to the amendment SA 2786 proposed by Mr. Reid (for himself, Mr. Baucus, Mr. Dodd, and Mr. Harkin) to the bill H.R. 3590, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes; as follows:

At the end of the amendment, add the following:

The provisions of this Act shall become effective 5 days after enactment.